Memorial Day weekend sales (or really any holiday weekend) usually equals a few crappy sales and then knocking off early for breakfast. Plus it’s been raining! Sometimes when you expect nothing you are pleasantly surprised when it works in your favor.

Our first stop was an estate sale for an old woman just down the street from me, the listing said she was a world traveler, but aside from a boxes of matches from all over the world there wasn’t much there. She did have this amazing jewel-encrusted Buddha.

One room was filled with Christmas items, does every estate sale need to have one of these? It actually makes me never want to collect anything holiday-related.

It turned out she had been the owner of the Viking Tavern, a great bar directly across the street. Not sure if she pocketed these “light” beers for a later date (um, like before 1978).

We moved on to a sale that I’ve hit a few times before, from this guy that is a sock rep. I have purchased socks from him each time. Last time I purchased some Dahlgren socks that my boyfriend and i still fight over. I was a little bummed that he is no longer a Dahlgren guy, but I still purchased 15 pairs of socks.

Next we ended up at sale that we had been at a couple of weeks ago, and I moaned about having to just do a drive by. But we stopped, and it turned out to be the best sale of the day. It’s true she had her sale before, but this time she was really cleaning house. I picked up a Gunne Sax dress for a buck and a few other items. We started to drive away and I looked up on the porch and noticed it was packed with stuff that we hadn’t even seen! We stopped the car and started digging in piles of CDs for 50 cents each, books, and records for 25 cents. SCORE. We both left with piles of CDs and probably my best purchase: a sealed box CD set called “The Ultra-Rare Best Of William Burroughs: From Giorno Poetry Systems.” $2 – woot!

To counter-balance out that one, we then hit one of the most crusty sales. The sale was filled with stuff and all of it was bad. I am not even sure how people end up with so much garbage. I hate to make judgments, but since so many items end up in landfills it seems like a good idea to stop and think for a second before you buy some piece of crap.

Heading away from that one, we drove past this huge pink bird thing just parked on the street, and had to stop the car. Still don’t know what it is.

After hitting a few more sales we went to another area of town and hit some of the biggest duds ever. We were entertained by this guy’s sign, but his sale was bad.

At one stop we came across one of the better combinations — the taco holder and the bagel holder.

After starting to head home we got lured into hitting what I can only describe as the Wall Drug of yard sales. Anyone that has been to Wall Drug knows that they have these signs every couple of miles … Here are some of the stuff that these people had written on their signs (which we drove past every six blocks or so).

• Let’s Talk About Yard Sales
• A House, A Home, A Yard Sale
• Stop Driving, Start Living – Yard Sale
• The Architecture of Yard Sales
• Super Groovy Yard Sale
• Kick Ass Yard Sale, Dude

Considering it was 2:00 pm when we got there, they still had tons of stuff: tools, tons of t-shirts, and loads of sci-fi paperback books. There was nothing we wanted to purchase.

Jenny drove by some of the signs on Monday and they had added on the word “FREE” — I think by then they were probably desperate to have people just come and take the leftovers away.

Some of the sales were really bad, but the ones that were good more than made up for it and it ended up being a pretty great day.

You know how sometimes there is a theme for the day? Well, this Saturday was the complete opposite, with a ton of sales and a little bit of everything. Recurring guest star Karl came along for a great morning of sales. (And in a stunning turn of events, it was hot, sunny, and gorgeous out!)

One of our first stops was a sale that we’d been to once or twice before. The seller had tons of great vintage items … priced just high enough to make me think twice. Karl did pick up a Pac-Man drinking glass here.

At the next stop, we admired the effort put into this lemonade sign … although no one seemed to be there to sell it.

I guess it was still a little too early for lemonade, so we just looked at their stuff. I noticed the writing on this label and was rather stupefied.

I walked over and showed it to Karl and we both stood there with our mouths open for a good minute or so, before he realized it was meant to say “Set.” Oh.

After a few unremarkable sales we headed to one whose ad was scary, yet intriguing, mentioning “sexy hippie clothing and vintage birdhouses!” I figured it would be horrible, but of course I was curious. It turned out to be run by someone we knew, and wasn’t scary at all. In fact, it was chock full of interesting junk. Just the way we like our sales.

The “sexy hippie clothing” seemed like slightly false advertising (not that I minded in the least!), but the vintage birdhouses were definitely present.

We saw lots of odd items throughout the day, including this drinking fountain just plopped down on the lawn.

Along with the fountain there were a ton of clothes for sale, but nothing that interesting … or so I thought! Meghan’s yard sale superpowers led her right to a bunch of two-dollar ’50s sequined tops hanging on some tree branches. Dang! That was a good sale (with a couple more right nearby) … but some of them were really pathetic. At this one it looked like the sellers had just given up. Keep in mind it was only about 10:30 a.m.

At a moving sale, Meghan picked up a hilarious set of headphones with built in mike, proclaiming them “totally Wild World of Sports!” Remembering Olympic Manor last year, we asked her to please put them on and wear them around all day. Of course, she obliged … although they were only worn while she was at the sale, much to the entertainment of me, Karl, and everyone else there.

We went to one sale inside an apartment where we encountered a pair of our least favorite yard-sale-going specimens: scanners! I went over to see if they were even scanning anything good, finding them huddled around a pretty unremarkable stack of CDs. While doing this I heard Meghan loudly complaining about them to the seller. We headed out to the car while Karl finished rummaging through a box of records. When he finally came out, he told us that he’d talked to the scanner dude. The conversation apparently went something like this:

Karl: Is that laser going to hurt my eyes?
Scanner: What?
Karl: You heard what I said.
Scanner: Ha ha … how’s it going?
Karl: Seriously, do you guys ever find anything you can sell for more than five bucks?
Scanner: Actually, one time I sold a Tori Amos bootleg series CD for $299!
Karl: There must be a lot of lonely people out there.
Scanner: What does that have to do with anything?
Karl: A lot.

This exchange kept us laughing for the rest of the day.

The next sale was great, with Karl purchasing so many items he had to make plans to come back later to pick it all up. The stuff was mostly on their porch, with a few items inside. I found some great books and was really excited until the seller came in and embarrassedly told me that only the items on the card table were part of the sale. Sad.

Next was a sale where their ad said the sale was on “Saterday.” I didn’t expect much, and I was right. It was two dudes with a few bedraggled piles of stuff set out on the strip outside their apartment. The only thing that surprised me was that they were drinking bottled water rather than cans of beer.

Driving to what we’d planned to be our last sale, we saw a flyer for a school rummage sale that I swear wasn’t even advertised in the paper or on Craigslist! We figured it could be good. On the way we stopped at a sale hidden down a narrow pathway between two businesses. The people were friendly and funny (and kinda baked), and we all found stuff. Meghan bought a great leather jacket for $5, I bought a tiny Ramones t-shirt for my kid to grow into, and Karl bought a mind-boggling record, which we’re hoping he’ll write about for us soon.

We parked on the wrong side of the rummage sale, which turned out to be OK since there was another sale nearby where Meghan got the most amazing vintage high-heeled shoes ever — you’ll see them in the trunk photo, though it doesn’t really do them justice. The seller said they belonged to her great-grandmother and they were a mere two bucks!

Finally we found the way into the rummage sale, which was massive.

Most of it was garden-variety stuff, with a few cool items … and a few not-so-cool items, like this almost-indescribable purse.

I bought a few books here, rounding out my extremely small pile of purchases. Really, for hitting probably 20+ sales, you’d think I would have bought more … especially considering that Karl and Meghan filled the trunk and then some! There were a lot of things I was on the fence about but just wasn’t quite motivated to buy. That’s the way it goes sometimes and really, that’s okay by me. There’s always next week …

Back in May 2007 (when the blog was like a newborn baby) Jenny and I spent a wonderful sunny day in West Seattle at their annual garage sale day (and both of us wrote about it). For a while we weren’t sure if it was going to happen this year, but then we found out it was on.

Let me start with the simple fact that I am 100% sick of starting each blog talking about the weather! I feel like some demented farmers almanac. With that said, at 8:00 am it was full on raining. Call me crazy, but I hate damp books and wet tarps. With Jenny out of town, I invited occasional guest star Leslie to come help me navigate the supposed 100+ sales.

Leslie and I started out with coffee and no map, but we hit the main drag and just started following signs. We hit 3 complete duds, then found a Kiwanis Club sale.

O.K., the photo doesn’t look that great, but it did have some hidden treasures.

The sun started to come out and we hit tons of sales over the next couple of hours. The 11th annual alley sale … that was bad.

Next was a sale spread out all around a corner.

It was there that I saw the most gigantic box of hot sauce. When I asked the seller about it, he said that people started to think he collected different hot sauces and would bring him different types until it took over his kitchen.

I wanted to buy one of these child’s pony rides, but even for $10 I knew that I had no place for them.

We hit a sale at the large driveway next to Hotwire Coffee. Found nothing good and one guy was selling food from his kitchen. This reminded me of the box of Hamburger Helper from this winter. Leslie made some comment about how people should just donate more items to the food bank.

We had to take a break at 12:30 to get some lunch at Zippy Burger. Yum!

One of my favorite items of the day was seeing this broken nudie playboy bunny glass sitting in a planter.

Leslie seemed almost freaked out at how much she had purchased, since she usually doesn’t end up buying much. At one sale she purchased a blond Heywood Wakefield block shelf! Also, I have requested that she do a book report for us on the Magic Farm book (I think you can see it in the trunk photo) that she purchased. We hit about 60 sales and knocked off around 1:30.